36in16

The 36 in 16 challenge

Epidiah Ravachol's challenge this year was about playing with new people, in particular with people new to roleplaying.

It turned out to be a very hard challenge. Here are the raw numbers and the level descriptions.

Levels

Legit Level: In 2016, I will play games with 36 unique people.

Basic Level: In 2016, I will play games with 36 people I have never played with.

Intermediate Level: In 2016, I will play 36 games, each with at least one person I have never played with.

Advanced Level: In 2016, I will play 36 games, each entirely made up of other players I have never played with.

Companion Level: In 2016, I will play roleplaying games with 36 people who have never played a roleplaying game before.

Results

Legit: 45Basic: 20 Intermediate: 11 Advanced: 1Companion: 0

Conclusion

I played with 45 different people, which seems a reasonable amount of people. Of these 20, roughly a half, were people I had never played with before.

Due to the fact that people tend to play in little clumps with each other that meant that only 11 sessions actually counted as games with new people, a very much smaller proportion of the gaming I did this year.

Ultimately I felt this challenge was really about attending conventions or national-level game gatherings. Going to regular events or recurring meetups simply had diminishing returns. My only Advanced game occurred at a convention.

I also failed to introduce anyone to roleplaying (let alone a whole group of people). Many of the new people I played with were lapsed or irregular gamers rather than people who had never played before.